


The Hutter Way

by Missy



Category: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Family Dynamics, Humor, OR ARE THEY?!, Other, Plot Twists, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Stealth Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cornered by Brisco, Pete Hutter spins a yarn about his childhood that involves another member of Brisco's rogue gallery - and may or may not be a giant fib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hutter Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



> Written for DesertScribe for Round 1 of Genswap! Thank you to Red Fiona for beta!

“All right, Brisco! This is where I’m drawing the line!” Pete Hutter stooped, bending as he drew the tip of his silver boot across the dirt path between them. “See? There it is! That’s one fine line!”

Brisco squinted down the sights of his gun, and then raised an eyebrow, pulling it away and glaring at Pete. “Y’know, Pete, I don’t think it’s too healthy for you to keep standing under that signpost.”

“And why not? I am within my legal limits, and the sign is in no danger of falling on me and dashing out my brains.” He stood silent, erect and proud, hand on the trigger. “And right now I’m practicing my right to bear arms!”

Brisco sighed. “Keep your arms as bare as you want ‘em, either way you’re coming in with me.” 

“Not until you tell me how she is!” 

Brisco sighed. “I told you, Dix’ll be fine – it was just a little tumble down a shallow embankment, she’s with the doc now.”

“As beautimous as Miss Cousins is, I’m afraid I’m not concerned with her well-being at the moment. I’m speaking about my beloved sister, Rita.”

“Rita?” Brisco asked, chewing the name over. “Rita Avnet?”

“That would be correct. Though y’are calling her by her married name, a long-departed and completely useless moniker.”

“That’s the moniker she used to trap Soc,” Brisco said, “which makes it as good as any name I might stoop to call her.” Brisco leaned against Comet and tucked a free hand against his hip. “Maybe we should talk about this, Pete. How’d it all begin, how did you and Rita get separated? And how’d you both get mixed up in the criminal life?”

“Well, Brisco,” said Pete philosophically, “that’s an awful long story. I don’t know if I’ve got the time to tell it properly.” 

Brisco shrugged. “The state marshal’s five miles away, and likely dragging the trunk of jewelry you ditched in Las Vegas. I do believe we have plenty of time.”

And so Pete began the story.

*** 

It seemed that back when they were young, Pete and Rita’s parents were prosperous horse thieves. They squatted on a fine slip of land down by the Rio Grande, and had a warm little soddy with room enough for the four of them. It had been a good life, a somehow moral one; even as their parents grafted and stole their way across the west Rita and Pete were expected to go to Sunday school, to be smart, to be far more educated than their own parents. By the time Pete was five, he knew the common prayer book, and Rita had developed a fondness for the myths and fables volume that had been in the family for generations; their mother had carried it in a lawn handkerchief from Ireland to America. 

Pete was too odd to get along well with the other boys in his class, but Rita became an accomplished, popular liar, and she used that influence to help him along in school whenever she could. Pete often found himself a party to Rita’s schemes, anything from stealing sweets out of the teacher’s desk during the noon bell or rigging a bobsled to dump her hated rival into a snow bank. They stole turnovers and sausages from the store and would eat them on the roof of the hotel, where they presumed they were invisible and impervious to the detection of their crime.

Tutored by their father, Pete had been set to pick pocketing early, while Rita had been kept home to learn the ways of womanliness. Pete deferred to Rita’s intelligence and class in that respect; while he was a fine gunslinger, Rita had the intelligence and class to marry up and make herself a fine lady with real influence – or, if push came to shove, make a fine governess with a hand on the family’s safe. When Pete left home with his dad to learn the ways of the world, Rita was sent off to Boston to a finishing school his parents had scrimped and saved to send her off to. 

He didn’t mind much. Pete absorbed books like a sponge, and he considered that education enough. Rita took up a secretarial course and wrote him faithfully every week – or the hole in the ground that had been the family home. Pete started seeing the world and building his reputation as the fastest gun in the west. Their letters crossed in the post and sometimes missed their intended targets.

The next time he heard from Rita, she was working as a stenographer for a well-known lawyer in Brooklyn. Two days later that lawyer’s abode burst into mysterious flames and Rita turned up at the reading of the will to hear herself pronounced the sole heir. Then she ended up working her way westward. By that time, Pete was part of Bly’s gang and had no regular address for her to reach, but they would try and meet up at various stage stops to trade news from home and tips on maintaining their burgeoning criminality. He was the first person to learn of her love for Socrates, and Pete had been downright scandalized to discover that Rita had fallen in love with Socrates Poole. Though the straight as an arrow lawyer wasn’t even close to his idea of a perfect man for his big sister, Rita had insisted she had the situation in hand. Pete had done what thousands of men before him had done, and let his little sister go to rope and brand herself her own executive. 

*** 

“…Did you have to put it that way?” wondered Brisco, cringing at the image.

“My words are as colorful and poetic as any other man faced with the purgatory that is a long jail sentence,” he replied. “You know the rest of the story. Now my baby sister’s sentenced to a lifetime of drifting in and outta institutions in the vain hope of somebody figuring out how to unbop her noodle.” He shook his head. “It’d be sad if she weren’t so used to it.”

“You never know, Pete,” Brisco said. “Rita might meet a nice fellow and settle down.”

“Only horses and fools wish,” he declared.

Brisco sighed. Well, if that was Pete’s opinion he wasn’t about to be the one to change it. He whistled and Comet trotted eagerly up over the hills. Forget the rescue party – they’d ride out and meet up with Rita and the rest of them instead.

Brisco could only wonder if Pete’s story was just a load of hooey he’d told to pass the time. Well, he thought, as he deliberately selected the bumpiest path possible, he’d find out soon enough…. 

*** 

A few miles up the road, Rita sat beside Socrates, who had a gun trained on the secretary. “We don’t have to do it like this Socrates. I told you you can trust me.”

“Rita, I’m afraid I’m all out of trust when it comes to you.” Socrates kept his thumb on the trigger while Brisco galloped up, Pete still strapped over his saddle.

“Are we all right?” She asked. Then her eyes widened dramatically at the sight of Pete slung over the saddlehorn.

“Rita,” Pete called. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just fine,” she sniffed. “What about you?”

“I’ll be better when I can get a good look at my dear sister,” Pete said.

“You can do plenty of looking with the marshal comes to take you both to jail,” Brisco said. 

What happened next was a blur of a disaster that few could retell with any accuracy, but it ended with Brisco and Socrates cold-cocked on the ground and Pete and Rita making out on the back of Socrates’ horse.

The two robbers broke apart, panting happily. “Nice rescue, ‘bro’,” she said, heavily sarcastic. “But I don’t believe,” she added, hanging an arm around his shoulder, “you told them we were brother and sister! I’ve done a lot of things in my time, but incest is a little below my moral standards.”

“A wise man once told me a simple parable – win if you can, you lose if you must – but always cheat.”

Cackling, they turned Soc’s horse toward the railroad tracks, hoping to outpace Brisco before he woke up.

When he did catch up with them there was a long, drawn out, and awkward story to be told about lying, accurate cover stories, and how embarrassing it can be to be caught with your pants down. But that’s another story….

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.** , all of whom are the property of the **Warner Brothers Productions**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
